I think the simplest place to buy, sell, and store coins is Coinbase (and our tutorial below will help you get set up with that), but you can only buy, sell, and store Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash on Coinbase. If you are serious about trading cryptocurrency, you’ll need another exchange like Coinbase’s GDAX, Bittrex, Binance, or Kraken (and you’ll likely want to find a wallet to store your coins in). See a top 5 list of cryptocurrency exchanges and the Best Bitcoin Exchanges ranked (those above are my picks).
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There are a number of tools you can use to maximize profits and minimize risks, such as margin trading, leverage, and stop-loss orders. Shorting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be done in a variety of ways. Just looking at the Bitcoin price chart for early 2018, you can see that those that spotted the downward trend in mid January and made a short trade would have made 40% profits by exiting one month later.
When Bitcoin forks into a new cryptocurrency… everyone gets free coins. When Bitcoin Cash was created, everyone holding BTC got 1 Cash for every BTC they had. Next time Bitcoin forks this will be true again. NOTE: Forks can be confusing; if you aren’t in the fork for the capture date (which isn’t always clear) you don’t get the free coins. DO NOT CHASE FREE COINS (see next point).
Closing a trade in profit. It is important to take your winnings out of a trade. Cryptocurrencies move faster downwards than they do upwards, and you don’t want to be late cashing out of a trade. You also don’t want to be too early and miss out on extra profits. There are a lot of techniques to help you make this decision that are out of the scope of this beginner’s guide.
Figure out if you want to go long or short. Are you going short with every penny you have to invest, or are you going to go long with some and short with some? Long-term investors will pay a lower tax rate if they can hold for over 12 months, but as a trade-off, they WILL have to sit through corrections (likely seeing their balance go down 50% plus on paper as often as they see it go up). Short-term investors can avoid corrections if they are nimble, but they’ll owe taxes on the profits from each trade they do along the way (see: how taxes work with cryptocurrency to understand how the long term and short term capital gains tax work with cryptocurrency).
Ideally, a rookie trader should start by choosing a reliable exchange and playing with popular coins, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. However, the learning by doing approach is too slow for those who want to succeed fast. Joining a community of like-minded traders could be one of the best decisions to make: there are plenty of groups on Telegram or regular meetups in the US and other countries.
These are what allow us to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. There are a handful of popular crypto exchanges, some of them have advantages over others. For example, some exchanges don’t allow us to deposit and withdraw using fiat currency like the U.S. dollar and euro; others aren’t available in certain countries. In this guide we will focus on two very popular exchanges, GDAX and Poloniex. GDAX gives us the ability to use our fiat currency to buy Bitcoin. Poloniex does not, but does give us a wide array of altcoins to trade. There, we’ll be using major coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum to buy the altcoins, and vice versa. Other popular exchanges such as Kraken and Bittrex offer even more coins.
Watch out for scams. There are a few different scams in the crypto world. Anything that isn’t buying a coin with a good reputation is a big risk. Learn more about scams. In short, be super careful about anything that promises free coins, sick returns, or wants you to lend your coins. Buy the top coins using a careful strategy and ignore all the sites promising you they can outperform the market if only you give them X, Y, and Z.
The cryptocurrency market is insanely volatile in 2018. You can make a fortune in a moment and lose it in the next whether you trade Bitcoin, another coin, or the GBTC Bitcoin trust. Consider mitigating risks, hedging, and not “going long” with all your investable funds. TIP: If you trade only the top coins by market cap (that is coins like Bitcoin Ethereum), or GBTC, then the chances of losing everything overnight are slim (not impossible, but slim). Other cryptocurrencies are riskier (but can offer quick gains on a good day).
If you’re not careful when it comes to cryptocurrency trading, you could find yourself gambling more than you’re trading, and eventually you might lose all your money. Trading is not a game, and just as there is real money to be made, there is real money to be lost. Doing your research and keeping the following concepts in mind when trading could help you avoid the pitfalls of cryptocurrency trading.
Most traders who do not have a plan for trading blindly will be eliminated in the near future. As a transaction, bitcoin trading is no different from other underlying objects, such as stock futures. An effective trading strategy is essential in order to make a steady profit in this market. Stop the loss of profits, homeopathy, light warehouse is the key. To strictly implement these trading plan, use the program trading is very effective, program trading my first contact with bitcoin is BotVS quantification in the know the platform to see the column introduced bitcoin hedging strategy is inspired by. Later, I tried to write some trading strategies and use them on firm exchanges. Accumulated a lot of bitcoin trading experience. I’m still bullish on bitcoin, which was a great invention in the twenty-first Century.
Keeping up to speed with the news on Cointelegraph, seeking independent ratings on ICOs, and gathering as much information as you can on a coin’s background are essential steps before you decide to make an investment. After making a purchase, monitor any changes in price closely – and consider setting higher and upper limits on when you would want to sell your crypto, mitigating losses in the event of a crash and protecting profits after a surge.
Don’t go downloading random wallets or clicking on random links, but do accept that you have to share information with exchanges. There is some malware out there, and you need to do research and be careful. However, for all you want to protect your privacy, you have to share your info with exchanges you want to use. So share what you have to and download apps as needed, but be careful and do research.
You could try this instead: You could try to avoid times where you know there’ll be relatively less liquidity in crypto — like nights and weekends — by closing out all of your positions every night and over the weekend. You might also consider maximizing the liquidity to which you have access by trading on a platform that allows you to access many different exchanges at once, rather than trading on only one or two specific exchanges.

For any significant investment in the space, I’m using the pick-and-shovel strategy to gain crypto exposure in the portfolio. Which “play” am I investing in? After much research and networking and grovelling, I’ve finally found a very good target which is ironically, a mining operation. I’ve been looking for an exchange play but haven’t found one yet…(so if any of you know of a solid one looking for funding, feel free to lob it my way :-))

Bitcoin (BTC) is King/Queen; Don’t Get Overly Optimistic About Altcoins. Those who invest in BTC tend to get itchy fingers when BTC stagnates and alts go up. Sure, going into IOTA or ZCash can be a brilliant move at times… at other times you’ll be holding the bag while everyone moves back into BTC. Stick with coins you know and like, but consider always being partly in BTC (not 24/7, but in general). This advise applies somewhat to Ethereum as well, but first and foremost BTC is the center of the crypto economy.

Cryptocurrency exchanges are websites where you can buy, sell or exchange cryptocurrencies for other digital currency or traditional currency like US dollars or Euro. For those that want to trade professionally and have access to fancy trading tools, you will likely need to use an exchange that requires you to verify your ID and open an account. If you just want to make the occasional, straightforward trade, there are also platforms that you can use that do not require an account.

Set limit orders for a few dollars under or over recent lows and highs. This can result in you buying or selling before BTC hits resistance. Sure, you can use crazy TA skills to find support and resistance levels, but you can also eye out levels by looking at a chart. 9 times out of 10 you’ll be able to eyeball a general support or resistance level and get close to the level a pro would have charted out (partly because the price has likely stalled on / bounced off those levels before; little parlor trick).
You could try this instead: Buy and sell on multiple exchanges; then, when you see those moments of indecision in the market, buy more of the cryptocurrency on the exchange with the lowest price, while simultaneously selling some on the exchange with the highest price. That way, your risk is mitigated: if the price rises, you’ve made money, and if it drops, you can buy back in at the lower price.
Leverage is money that a broker loans you. Unless you’re a professional trader, you should stay away from leverage until you’ve learned everything you can learn about making trades with your own money. While leverage can help you make greater profits with short cryptocurrency movements, it can also amplify your losses when the trade takes a wrong turn.
One interesting development that we have seen with the advent of blockchain technology is the cryptocurrency market. Blockchain has spawned an entirely novel marketplace of investible digital assets. Like with any other existing traditional markets such as stocks or bonds, the cryptocurrency market is ripe with opportunities for those that are able to capitalise on them. There are a variety of different trading strategies that one can take to ‘beat the market’, here are a few that are most commonly employed.
In 2015 and the beginning of 2016, when Bitcoin held solid – as solid as Bitcoin can be – shuffling around $300 per one BTC, the game was trading Altcoins in order to gain more Bitcoin. It was expected that Bitcoin would grow higher in the future (the Pygmalion effect). Having a rather volatile base asset, such as Bitcoin, raises our need to compare our portfolio performance both in terms of its Bitcoin’s value and its dollar’s value. Many traders decreased the number of Bitcoin they are holding during the past year (hey, and it wasn’t hard when Ethereum got cut 70% from its Bitcoin all-time high…) although it had a nice dollar yield. Bitcoin’s growth made a lot of money for the crypto market, causing its total market cap to increase 30 times during the last year! As traders, it is important to keep Bitcoin as your base asset, but also not to forget the dollar value, and to take profit sometimes. You should always see the bigger picture – crypto is only one tier of your investment options. There are also the stock markets, real estate, bonds and many more investment opportunities. It is important to spread the risks among the crypto portfolio, as well as in the whole household investment portfolio.
So how do you know if you should invest in an ICO? It’s not about science, it is important to pay attention to the level of seriousness of the project and its team. Look for the project’s website (does it look like a child has built it during computer school?), Who is the team behind the project – Are they hiding behind nicknames or proudly present themselves on their website? Pay attention to the Bitcointalk thread (does it exist at all?) and how the team members respond to technical questions. Is there a large community behind the project? Expect to see a Slack gathering its community. Watch out the amount raised: A project which had raised too little will probably will not be able to develop over time, a project which had raised huge amount – there won’t be enough investors left out there to buy coins on exchanges. And most importantly is risk management. Never put all eggs in one basket and invest too much of your portfolio in one ICO.
Litecoin, like all major altcoins, has depreciated substantially against BTC. This decline has been precipitous and nearly monotonic since May, with even the slightest corrective rally sold off immediately. However, we may find solace in the fact this pair appears to have found footing around 9070, which appears to be a very significant level of support. In the ...
Why is it necessary to do this way? When you go shopping, you try to find the best prices looking for discount programs, bonus campaigns and other ways to minimize your expenses. When dealing with crypto trading, you have no need to compare prices in different places as the cost is on the chart already. All you need is to understand whether this price is suitable for you or not.
Trading on low-volume days in the market could incur substantial slippage. People who make trades — especially large trades — on low-volume days often will not find many partners on the other side of the order book willing to make that trade. The result is that they could end up paying much more for the trade than expected, incurring slippage in the process.
Now, about mean reversion. When looking back at charts for cryptocurrency trading from the times gone by, most of the plays have been in the momentum category. If we have the condition for mean reversion with a range-bound environment, one should be very cautious when we have momentum. If everyone else is buying and you’re trying to sell you are going to get run over as if standing on the tracks in front of a freight train.

You could try this instead: Be sure to keep reading crypto news and price analyses — not just staring at charts. Even though you shouldn’t give in to the FOMO and FUD generated by many crypto articles, you still need the news in order to stay apprised of market conditions. Also consider setting stop-loss orders to ensure that your losses will be mitigated in the event of something like contagion.

No coin will go up forever, even Bitcoin has very good days, and then some really rough ones. The crypto space is ever-changing and evolving, with new opportunities coming up every day. If you believe in a coin, holding it for long-term returns is a good approach, but if you are looking to make money by trading, you cannot have emotional attachments with any coin.
If your focus lies in crypto-to-crypto trading, Binance is the option you can go ahead with. Binance is ranked as one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges worldwide. Being natively evolved from China, it offers its features and functionality to traders worldwide. On the top of this, it’ll also provide you with impressive offerings along with an extremely low trading fee. Though the Binance platform hasn’t been too old in the field of exchanges, it has taken over and gained a rapid growth by getting listed in the top 10 cryptocurrency exchange platforms of current times. Binance holds a huge selection of altcoins with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether pairing.
Only invest what you can lose. During the recent crash in January 2018, hobby-investors got burned. Reports of frustration and losses came at the cost of broken monitors, smashed laptops, and heavy monetary losses. While the rules are in more particular order of importance, it’s safe to assume that this is the most important rule, the rule to rule the rules. As soon as your money is converted into cryptocurrency, consider it lost forever. There is absolutely no guarantee you can get it back. Losses don’t simply come from dips in the market; extraordinary factors such as hacks, bugs, and government regulation can mean you’ll never see any of your money again. If you are investing money you can’t afford to lose, you need to take a step back and re-evaluate your current financial situation, because what you’re about to do is an act of desperation. This includes: using credit cards, taking out mortgages, applying for loans, or selling everything and traveling the world (as glamorous as that sounds).